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Delighted to welcome educator and storyteller Norah Colvin and some posts from her archives. In her first post from 2015, Norah who is a dedicated participant in the Carrot Ranch Flash Fiction challenge, was reminded about a family mystery.

Understanding family relationships by Norah Colvin

At the Carrot Ranch this week Charli Mills is talking about cold cases and challenges writers to, In 99 words (no more, no less) write about an old mystery in the current time. Is it a discovery? Is it solved? Does it no longer matter, or does it impact innocent generations in between?

My thoughts immediately turned to a mystery that occurred in my family over one hundred years ago when the two-year old brother of my grandfather disappeared and was never seen again.

Most families do have a skeleton or two in the closet. Not all families like it to be known. Many Australian families who can trace the arrival of ancestors back to before the end of convict transportation in 1868 can find a convict in their ancestry. I have two; one on each side of the family. Generally the reasons for transportation were rather minor so I am not too concerned about sharing that information. In fact, many Australians are delighted to find a convict in the past as it adds a little interest and colour to their family tree.

Children generally love to hear stories of their own lives and families. I have written about that before here. However young children probably have no need for or interest in delving as far back into family history as the three stories I have mentioned above. An interest in ancestors further back than living relatives (grandparents and great-grandparents) usually develops later, if at all.

A great place to start thinking about history in early childhood classrooms is sharing stories about the families of children in the class. Most classes in Australia are comprised of children from variety of backgrounds so sharing those stories helps to develop an appreciation for each other as well as knowledge of the world. I developed a unit called Getting to know you for use in early childhood classroom which aims to develop discussion about family histories.

But children can start learning about family relationships even earlier than that by discussions of who’s who in the family and explanations of the words and relationships; for example father/daughter; brother/sister; aunt/niece; grandmother/granddaughter.

Here is a picture of some pages of a book I made for Bec when she was just a little tot, just to give you the idea.

Photo books of family members are much easier to make these days with digital photos and programs such as PowerPoint, as well as glossy books you can make and order online.

I am very proud of my two grandchildren, as any grandparent would be, and am pleased to say that they have a good understanding of who is in their family and their relationships to each other. It is a frequent topic of discussion. However I was very tickled when my three year old granddaughter proceeded to tell me, with some excitement, that her Daddy and her Aunty Bec were brother and sister in real life; in REAL life, she emphasized.

Regular readers of my blog may be familiar with a character I have been developing in response to Charli’s flash fiction challenges: Marnie. Her story is not real life but, sadly, aspects of it could be, for others. There was a period of about twenty years when, after escaping her dysfunctional family, Marnie was untraceable, living without any connection to her family and past, a mystery. It took authorities five years after both parents had passed to track her down with the ‘news’. This episode takes up there.

Found

The officers looked friendly enough but still she tried to hide the tremble in her soul and tremor in her voice behind the blankness of her stare.

She’d opened the door just a crack, as far as the chain would allow.

“Marnie Dobson?” they asked. She shook her head. She’d not . . . ; not since . . . ; no longer. She shook again.

They asked her to step outside. With no other option she reluctantly unlocked and emerged into the glare of daylight.

I am an experienced and passionate educator. I teach. I write. I create.

I have spent almost all my life thinking and learning about thinking and learning.

I have been involved in many educational roles, both in and out of formal schooling situations, always combining my love of teaching and writing by creating original materials to support children’s learning.

Now as I step away from the classroom again, I embark upon my latest iteration: sharing my thoughts about education by challenging what exists while asking what could be; and inviting early childhood educators to support children’s learning through use of my original teaching materials which are now available on my website http://www.readilearn.com.au

My thanks to Norah for sharing this post and I think the family picture book is an excellent idea. I have done our family history but perhaps I can do that for the younger generation with the photographs that I have scanned and saved from the 1900s.

If you would like to share some posts from your archives that deserve to be read again and by a different audience, as well as promote your work.. then this is how…

Posts from Your Archives and the theme this time is all about family.

Personal memories of childhood or teens that are still fresh in your mind.

Family history, stories of your parents, grandparents and further back if you can.

The aim of this series is to showcase your blog and any creative work that you do from books, art, photography and crafts. You pick between one and four links to posts that you have written for your own blog from the day you started up to December 2018, and you simply send the link to those blogs to sally.cronin@moyhill.com

You have to do nothing more as I will capture the post and images from your blog and I will then post with full copyright to you.. with your creative work and your links to buy and to connect. I might sometimes need a little more information but I am quite resourceful in finding out everything I need.

So far in the Posts from Your Archives from September 2017, there have been over 700 posts from 200 + bloggers that have reached a different audience and encouraged more readers for their own blogs and current posts.

About Smorgasbord - Variety is the Spice of Life.

My name is Sally Cronin and I am doing what I love.. Writing. Books, short stories, Haiku and blog posts. My previous jobs are only relevant in as much as they have gifted me with a wonderful filing cabinet of memories and experiences which are very useful when putting pen to paper. I move between non-fiction health books and posts and fairy stories, romance and humour. I love variety which is why I called my blog Smorgasbord Invitation and you will find a wide range of subjects. You can find the whole story here.
Find out more at https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/about-me/

That’s wonderful, Sally. I helped my Dad record some of his family’s history but he ended up getting frustrated with the books we purchased to help him and he didn’t finish it. Perhaps, one day, when I make time, I’ll try to add to it.

Fantastic Norah.. I did the ancestry DNA and I found quite a few second cousins and managed to fill quite a few gaps in our own tree using theirs. And had some interesting conversations about Great grand parents I had never heard of… hugsxx

The ancestry DNA sounds fascinating, Sally. I should do that too. I tried to talk my son and daughter into doing it as I felt their results would add more to the story. They weren’t interested (not yet) so I should go ahead and do it myself. One day. 🙂

Both my mother and father documented some of their family’s history, but a lot of it is just names and dates. I think it’s the stories that make history come alive. Thankfully there is some of that too.

I didn’t mean to leave you hanging, Debby. I don’t think many of the convicts transported were serious criminals. Many were sent out for stealing half a loaf of bread to feed their families, or less. It was more an exercise in reducing overcrowding and poverty, I think. I wouldn’t be too keen on having criminals in my family at the moment. 🙂

Reblogged this on Norah Colvin and commented:
Sally Cronin has featured my post about understanding family relationship in her Smorgasbord Posts from your Archives #family series. If you missed it the first time, you might like to pop over to Sally’s to read and check out other posts on Sally’s wonderful blog.
Thank you so much for sharing, Sally. It’s a pleasure to feature on your blog.

I loved seeing your photo books (again), Norah. Those family relationships can be exciting to young children when realising that adults have sibling relationships too. I’m presenting my identity quiz tomorrow and have a quote about ‘all that David Copperfield stuff’ aka tracing your family tree, so timely for me.